Search results for 'tag:Spelling tag:Speaking English' matching tags 'Spelling' and 'Speaking English'

A dictionary

Anonymous — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:34:17 GMT

ãThis dictionary tells you about English words and how to use them in reading, writing and speaking English. It not only gives the meaning of words, it can also help you with spelling, word building, grammar and pronunciation.

ããTo use your dictionary correctly, you need to understand how the dictionary works. At the front of the book, you will find some exercises to help you make the most use of your dictionary.

ããIf you look up the word âcolourâ, you will find two spellings for this word. âColourâ is used in British English, while âcolorâ is used in American English. When such a thing happens, the dictionary shows it with the word âBrEâ for British English and âAmEâ for American English.

ããThe dictionay also helps you pronounce words correctly. It uses a special alphabet to show pronunciation. If you turn to the inside back face, you will see all the phonetic letters with some words to show you how they are pronounced. Just have a look this page when youâre not sure how to say a word.

ããThe most important reason for using a dictionary is to find out the meaning of a wordâits DEFINITION.

ããIn this dictionary, the definitions have been written using only 2000 words. This means that the definitions of even the most difficult words are simply explained and easy to understand.
ããWhen a word has more than one meaning, read all the meanings until you find the one that correctly tells the use of the word you are looking for

Re: Who's to decide the future?

Cool Breeze — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 09:02:00 GMT

Milky wrote:
<There is no such thing as "our way of speaking English", there are innumerable foreign ways of speaking it. There would be absolutely no agreement on "correct" usage.>

I'm not so sure he's conerned with what would or would not be correct usage, but more with who says what should be used internationally. About what the Standard/s should be.

It borders on megalomania to think nonnatives of any language could tell native speakers of any language how to use their language. I don't think a single Briton will embrace a single linguistic suggestion the French may try to force upon the British. The Frenchman's time would be more wisely spent if he tried to increase his word power and knowledge of English instead of having daydreams of changing the language to suit his needs.

I wonder what exactly he has in mind, anyway? The most difficult areas of English are the spelling and the idioms and there isn't much he can do there. The actual grammar is as simple as it can possibly be! I would say it is too simple and therefore ambiguity occasionally appears; what would communication be like if English structures were simplified even further?

CB

Re: "Chat" phrases you hate

TammyBaby — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 05:27:02 GMT

Francesca wrote:
Of course Elfsleepy: www.thechatpage.com no cams, just people who want to meet friends from all over the world and learn English

I myself didn't find it a good one, Francesca! Last time I visisted there, there was a girl flirting a guy, and she kept talking all the time like "Hey, where r u? Do you hate me?", etc. Noone could chat there! It's hard to find a good chatroom! Native speakers are not interested in learning English, of course. They wanna talk, not teach. Unless they are very kind, they won't help you anything with your poor language. If you cannot understand them, they simply say bye (if they are polite) or stop chatting without saying anything (if they are not).

But if you simply go to a chatroom to learn English with people have the same purpose. They are (all) non-native speakers. Their English, even good, is not really natural. And you find that you don't want learn their English, anyway. Non-native speakers wanna seek native ones to practise English but sometimes, native speakers find that non-native ones seem to take advantages from them. And of course, they stop chatting! I've got several emails with resume/motivation letters attached from many non-speaking English countries, they ask me to correct them (even I'm not a native speaker!). Of course I don't have time to do that, unless they are from people I already had some chats with and I consider as friends. I can help if they ask me when chatting with me, but not a couple of long letters to check, even spelling mistakes. I get sick of them! I want to make friends, have some chit-chat, cultural exchanges... but NOT teaching English! My English is not that good!

So if you wanna talk with native speakers, try to improve your English by yourself first, so at least you can understand them in most of situations. They are willing to tell you what some slangs mean but not most of the time. I myself don't like the question "What does it mean?" all the time when I just use very simple English. When we go to a chatroom, just simply we want to have some gossips, to have fun. That's it! None wanna be an English teacher, neither do I. Teaching is some thing quite stressful, not that fun to do in free time. Anyway, best of luck for your English study! ^^

Cheers,
-Tammy

Re: non-native accents

Marvin A. — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 03:40:21 GMT

This is really badly off topic but I couldn't resist the temptation to comment on your correct observation. I understand very well that native speakers of English mispronounce foreign words because foreign languages are not studied much in English-speaking countries.

Well, can you really blame us? In order to pronounce all of the foreign names we're faced with, we would have to know hundreds of different languages--which not many of us do. Also, we would have to know how certain names are Anglicized that were written in different scripts, such as Cyrillic or Greek. We'd also have to know the nationality of the name as well. Also some spellings are altered when written in English. We'd also have to adapt the name to fit English rules, anyway. For example, is a word ended with an [ E ] , in English, it would be pronounced as [ eI ] , because [ E ] is not acceptable at the end of a word. Also, some languages have diacritic marks that don't exist in English. This can change the pronunciation quite a bit. Let's suppose someone had the name Analaupe. In English, this would probably be read as [ Ã¦n@lAp ] or [ Ã¦n@loUp ]. Let's pretend that the name is Italian--then we would approximate it by pronouncing it as [ An@laUpeI ] . But maybe the name's Hawaiian, or Inuk, perhaps. Maybe it's Ethiopian or Greek. We don't know. What if it's French, and the "e" is supposed to have an accent mark on it? Also, there are some sounds that we just can't prononounce, and that we wouldn't use when speaking English. For example, many people pronounce "Bach" not as [ bax ] , but as [ bAk_} ] . We simply don't have the [ x ] sound in English. Beethoven pronounced in English (even by people who know how it ought to be pronounced) is not [ betof@n ] but rather [ betoUv@n ] --simply because it's spelt "Beethoven". People who have no idea how it's pronounced would say [ biToUv@n ] . But notice that even the people who know how it's pronounced in the original language don't even pronounce it correctly.

I suppose we should start criticizing the Japanese for pronouncing the name "Smith" as Sumisu-san, or "Ryan" as Laian-san?

It took me a few seconds in the 1980s to realise an Englishman and I were talking about the same Swedish tennis player, BjÃ¶rn Borg

Well, the average Anglophone does not know Swedish for one thing... let alone even being able to identify that that name is Swedish. I would say, that most would pronounce it as [ b@dZOr\n ] -- as that's how it looks in English. If they knew that in many languages, "j" is pronounced as [ j ] , rather than [ dZ ] , they might say [ bjOr\n ] . The closest approximation in English of the name would be [ bjr-n ] , but notice that both the vowel, and the "r" are still mispronounced. English lacks that vowel sound, as well as lacking that particular kind of "r".

Yes, the things you comment on are terrible, but they are the result of pure ignorance.

Yeah, they are. But let's be reasonable. Do you really expect English speakers to learn the orthography of every language on earth? Let alone to be able to guess which language a particular name is from? And to be able to guess how a particular name was altered to fit English orthography? Or to say unusual sounds that don't exist in English? Not to mention some people have altered the spelling and/or pronunciation of their name after immigrating.

Before the formula driver Michael Schumacher, whose name is always mispronounced, there was another German Schumacher, a football goalkeeper, and a Eurosports commentator pronounced his name shoemaker!

Some English-speaking people who have that particular German name, actually do pronounce it [ SumeIkr- ] . For them, [ SumAk@ ] (or especially [ Sumax@ ] ) would be an incorrect pronunciation of their name. Not all Anglophones know German... And remember, unlike in other languages, in English, one can pronounce ones name however one pleases, regardless of how it's spelt. Some Schumachers pronounce their name [ SumAk@ ] ; others [ Sumax@ ] ; others [ SumeIkr- ] ; other's [ bOb ] . Other Shumachers decide to become Schumakers, or Schoemakers or Shoemakers, or any number of spelling variants, and pronounce it totally differently.

What I find almost amusing is the tendency to pronounce even foreign proper nouns, say, people's names, as if they were English. An Englishman has actually asked me how I would pronounce my name in English!

Maybe he found your name very difficult to pronounce, and wanted to know if there was a shorter easier form of it in English... People with the name Aliahiakanamakumachumanakatachita, often have an "English name" of simply "Ali". Other people take on completely different names when visiting a foreign country. In lots of language classes, one picks for example, a traditional German name, or a French name, such as Xavier, and uses that name in class, and uses it when visiting the foreign country, instead of their actual name.

Re: The confusing teaacher

nona the brit — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 08:34:37 GMT

Overall points. Don't forget to end all sentences with a full stop/period/question mark. You overuse 'understand' in contexts where 'learn' would be better.

I've made a few corrections for you but otherwise spelling errors in red. Grammatical errors in blue. Parts that need rephrasing/do not make sense/a different word choice in yellow.

I am depressed

I always get problem speaking English.

It is very hard to speak English fluently

I canât express my opinions, ideas, or whatever is inside my head comfortably.

Vocabulary is the greatest problem.

No self confidence

However, Iâll try.

I was typing when the teacher asked what you were doing and wheter you were typing the lecture material or doing something else. I said that I was typing the lecture. Then she asked us not to type. She said that we could copy the material and we were asked to listen to her talk only.

I was confused. How could she prohibit us to make a note. In a classroom, students are encouraged to make a note what the teacher teach. The more diligent the student, the more he gets appreciation, eventhough appreciation is not the target. And I have the same opinion. Our target is understanding. In my opinion, making a note by computer is one step infront of one by ballpoint. Documents in computer can be re-arranged, sorted, freely cut and pasted, deleted or added, so that the contents are built on a specific manner according to our understanding. This process is almost impossible if we make a note on a book.

And she said about copying the material ?

Yes, absolutely. It should not be a question, because it has been traditionally done, every students knows automatically what they should do when a material in Powerpoint is infront of them. And it was also what teachers mean when they made a material in power point. So, the question was not understandable. (It sounds as though she issued an instruction, she didn't ask a question).

Then she said just listening to her in addition to copying the material :

You know that what a teacher said was not exactly the same as the material. Furthermore, the material was not complete. It contained short terms, words and sentences which were points of lecture. In turn, the points would be explained orally.

I couldnât guarantee that everybody could catch the points without listening to their explanation. And understanding the points didnât guarantee that they would remember them in another time. Thatâs why we made a note.

Then she said that typing disturbed consentration ?

I didnât think so. We were students. We were here to (You are mixing up present and past tense in this essay. Decide on one or the other) absorb, understand, and remember the lecture, not to discusse it. We could discuss it in another opportunity, when we were not burdened from system judging right or wrong, bad or good, and pass or fail.

The student atmosphere push us to study on that manner.

Furthermore, we understand better by listening and typing compared with listening only. Remember that the first way involves more senses than the second one. The only obstacle was teaching too fast.

Finally, she was the only teacher prohibited us.

By making a note, we try hard, we practice to express our understanding with our own sentences. We donât like becoming a robot. We are alive.

Re: USA or UK

Thethenothere123 — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 08:09:45 GMT

I feel as though the AmE vs. BrE distinction is largely exaggerated by non-native English speakers. In reality, the language itself is 99% the same (the only real differences are pronunciation and a few minor variations in spelling); and the vast majority of the time, English speakers from different countries have no difficulty understanding each other. Consequently, I think that attempting to "learn" one instead of the other is largely a pointless excercise, as most non-native speakers are unable to closely emulate the pronunciation and speech pattern to the point that a native speaker would be able to differentiate between someone that supposedly learned AmE rather than BrE. The person speaking would simply be thought of as "a person of country/language X that is speaking English."

Like a previous poster commented, your focus should be on using proper grammar and working to improve your pronunciation rather than worrying about the minor differences in the usage of language between two countries.

Idioms: Piece of Cake or Hard Nut to Crack?

Sindy — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 18:56:30 GMT

Howdy

This is the article I've written a while ago. I hope that it can be interesting for someone. This is one of my first attempts to bring all my thoughts together.

"A language is a living substance, which evolves under the influence of different factors. Being very flexible English language constantly enriches its vocabulary with the words invented by the language speakers, making it more colorful with new idiomatic expressions, and at times refills its stocks with the borrowings and neologisms. English just amazes by its extraordinary linguistic diversity.

It is a language rich in exceptions and spelling traps, where almost every rule is valid 90% of the time. English is a language with a vast idiomatic basis, which makes its learning very exciting and intriguing. There are about 4,000 idioms used in the American English. Wikipedia suggests that âto even explain what they mean needs about 2000 words of the vocabulary. â

Idioms derived from the culture of the nation and from day-to-day life. In real context idioms explain themselves: 9 times out of 10 times, idioms carry their own explanation. The main function of idioms is to paraphrase what is going on, and what is being said.

Idiomatic expressions pervade English with a peculiar flavor and give it astounding variety, bright character and color. They help language learners understand English culture, penetrate into customs and lifestyle of English people, and make a deeper insight into English history.

Idiom is defined as an expression that does not mean what it literally says. Hence, its meaning is often quite different from the word-for-word translation.

The meaning idioms convey is non-compositional. It implies that you cannot understand the meaning of the whole phrase putting the meanings of each word together. If you look at the individual words, it may not even make sense grammatically. Idiom has the meaning only as a unit.

Professor Koonin defined idiom âas a stable combination of words with a fully or partially figurative meaning.â This definition emphasizes two inherent and very important features of the idiomatic expressions.

Idioms have lexical and grammatical stability. It implies that they are fixed in their form, hence any substitutions and rearranging in their structure can lead to complete loss of their primary meaning.

Idiomatic expressions are integral units. It literally means that idioms possess indivisible completeness, so all the components are bound within one idiom.

Idioms are used in both spoken and written English, and often appear in newspaper articles. They are frequently utilized by native speakers, who feel the language at inborn genetic level.

One of the approaches to defining this linguistic phenomena stresses that an idiom is a manner of speaking that is natural to native speakers of the language. It proves that only people who are very good at speaking English can adequately and to the point use idiomatic expressions in their speech.

Though, learning idioms present a host of difficulties to English learners, primarily because they donât know the culture and history behind English idioms. Thatâs why they often use idioms incongruous with the situation. Indeed, English learners utilize idiomatic expressions very carefully, being afraid of using them incorrectly and being misunderstood. They find idioms very problematic to both understand and memorize.

Whilst, the majority of native language speakers can not always know the origin of idioms they use, though as long as they utilize them in every day communication, they know its meaning and feel where it is appropriate to use this or that idiom.

Undoubtedly, the correct usage of the English idioms is a finesse, which makes the language of the speaker more vivid and exciting."

Pet Page 49

deer — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 18:25:29 GMT

Helllllo

You have just finished a short language course in Scotland.
You are writing a letter to an English âspeaking friend.
Tell him or her what did on the course, how you spent your free time and what the other people were like

Introduction

Dear Jan,

How are you? I hope you are well. I have just finished a short language course.

What did on the course?
In the course, I had 30 hours classes in the week. I had separate classes for reading, writing, listening and speaking. My teacher spoke English in the classes. I had a lot of works in the writing skills to improve my language and my teacher gave a student t a lot of exam to know who understand what did he explain? Besides, I found that all difficult to learn that in 3 months.

How you spent your free time?
In my free time, I was reading a book for a long time to improve my English language. I also played tennis with English friend in the club.
Actually, I like speaking English while my life.

What the other people were like?
The people come from different country to learn English language. All of them, was poor in speaking and writing skills.

Iâm looking forward to hearing from you as soon as possible.

Best wishes,
deeeeeeeeer

___________________

I hope I donât have any mistake in spelling but in the grammar I am sure I have it but I try to improve my writing skill with you.

I need some teacher she'll spoke with me every day for 1 hr

Guest — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 12:49:38 GMT

hi i m retu from mumbai when i speaking english i did lot's of mistak and when we write i did lot's the spelling mistak pl. help me my problem
i want to speak in english
i wort this letter any with out help pl. ans. my message
some one there she teach me every day for 1hr she chatt with me and creet my spelling

thanking you,

Re: Hi, I need to develope my skills in speaking English as the native english people do. Plz help me. Pleaseeee.

rommie — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 12:49:22 GMT

That's what we're here for.

Just pick out sentences and phrases that you don't "get" and ask here why native speakers use them. Or ask questions about things you don't understand. You can even ask "I want to say XYZ - what are the possible ways of saying it?", and THEN ask why, after that's been answered.

We're all here to help.
Rommie

PS. Your post above was pretty good, apart from the spelling, but you are much too polite - a native would probably think that one "please help me" was sufficient.